This invention relates generally to personal grooming devices, and more particularly to devices useful for hairstyling and for curling locks of hair.
Many persons with straight hair wish to temporarily alter their hairstyle through techniques such as curling, blow-drying, ironing, and/or perming. It has been customary in grooming hair to roll a tress or a plurality of strands of hair on a cylindrical curler or curling iron and to apply heat and/or a moistening agent to the hair. The hair is left in its rolled state until it has dried and set. Typically, for curling iron applications, the shaft of the curling iron is heated to a high temperature, which causes the hair to set quickly. After the hair has set, the cylindrical curler(s) or curling iron is removed and the hair retains a curl or wave imparted by the cylindrical curler or curling iron.
However, the curl imparted by a typical cylindrical curler or curling iron is limited to the constraints of a constant-diameter roller (of the curler) or the constant-diameter shaft of the curling iron. The resultant lock of hair which has been curled using this technique forms a helical shape having a relatively constant diameter. Small diameter cylindrical rollers or shafts produce small helixes and large diameter cylindrical rollers or shafts produce large helixes. Additionally, much of the space on the cylindrical curler or curling iron is wasted because a majority portion of each lock of hair is rolled around the center portion of the curler or curling iron, leaving the end portions of the curler or curling iron unused and visually devoid of hair.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to overcome the disadvantages associated with conventional cylindrical curlers or curling irons, and to provide a novel hairstyling technique for styling hair into shapes which cannot be achieved using conventional cylindrical curlers or curling irons.